


Dandelions

by Space (aussieosbourne)



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy I
Genre: Falling In Love, Introspection, M/M, using the FFI death mechanics as a narrative tool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 06:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14995163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aussieosbourne/pseuds/Space
Summary: After all you have been through together, after all the blood and tears you have shed in this journey, you are grateful to have had the chance to share this with him before the end.





	Dandelions

You think — as you watch the crooked curve of his smile, the sunset lighting up his eyes like scattered diamonds — that it’s only a matter of time before you’re forced to admit that you’re in love with him.

He died in your arms, once. Two months, you had been travelling with this group of strangers — too green to survive on their own, you thought, before they saved your skin twice or thrice — and a killing hex dropped him dead into your arms. You had never been so shaken in your life. You made a point to use his name, then, when the clerics had revealed that even death was not enough to keep him down.

(It shouldn’t have been possible; there were mages that could revive the recently-dead, but only within a few minutes’ time, until the soul left the body. Elias had been dead for _three days._ What that meant for the four of you, you couldn’t say — are you all immortal? What are the conditions of this immortality? How many times can you die and be revived again with no deficit? How many times before death loses its meaning? If you were all struck down in battle, would your bodies stay where they fell, never rotting? You still shudder at the thought. You _still_ don’t know the answers, and you, yourself, have died twice.)

Until then, you had been calling him _cleric, healer, mage_ — anything but his name, half in jest and half out of the absolute terror that, gods forbid, you would grow to _like_ him.

You didn’t want any part of this quest, when it began. You had come into town with your caravan only to be accosted by the guard for the palm-sized citrine in your pommel, a stupid trinket that proved to be more trouble than it was worth. You didn’t _want_ to be a hero. You called your companions by their professions or some parody of their likeness, to dehumanize them out of fear that you would feel some sort of obligation toward them, some level of responsibility for their safety. But when Elias collapsed against your chest — when you _felt_ rather than heard the breath leave his body, torch slipping from his hand and clattering to the ground in a shower of sparks — you knew it was _your_ fault, because he pressed that protective spell into _your_ skin rather than his own, and the realization of exactly how much selflessness that took absolutely fucking terrified you.

The others had thought it strange, at first — your sudden willingness to get to know them, to call them by name, to be _friendly._ You stopped dancing around questions. You actually _listened_ when the others spoke, and stopped treating every moment in their presence like a waste of time. Tobias had the manners of a toad, but she was unfailingly reliable, and you respected her for it. (You also once saw her punch a pirate clean off his feet, and you made a point to stay on her good side from then on. Your mother didn’t raise a fool.) You had never quite gotten along with Pavel, given that your first impression was prying your wares out of his grubby fingers under supervision of the city guard. You learned, later on, that he was very much like you — overconfident and capricious, often questioned about the contents of his breeches — but you had so little in common elsewise that you only ever learned to tolerate each other.

Elias was gruff and headstrong, vocal with his exasperation. It had put you off, initially, because you felt oddly patronized — by a man half your age, no less — but you realized, as you slowly got to know him, that he only acted that way because he worried himself absolutely _sick_ over the three of you. He consistently put the party’s safety before his own, which was a matter you often butted heads about; when his reserves ran low, he'd patch his own wounds with gauze and salve rather than put anyone else at the slightest disadvantage. You healed him yourself, in those cases, deaf to his objections. He would run himself into the ground if you let him, so you didn’t let him.

You all learned to care for each other to some degree, but Elias would _die_ for any one of you, without hesitation. His conviction frightened you. It was as if he had measured out the worth of his life in advance, and when you realized how low the price had been set, you began to wonder if he _wanted_ to die.

He took you to his parents’ graves, once, on an overgrown plot of land outside Melmond’s city walls. Two rough-hewn headstones nestled in the sea-grass on the banks of the tidal river, surrounded by dandelions. It was a fortnight after you all crawled, bruised and bleeding, out of the Cavern of Earth; a fortnight after Elias very nearly died in your arms _again,_ after you were almost too unskilled in white magic to staunch the bleeding.

(Too close. You nearly killed yourself trying to save him, feeding too much of yourself into the magic, begging every god you'd ever heard of that he would live. You learned to pray, that night.)

You walked very softly around him. His injury was _your_ fault, and you spent every night curled protectively over the side of the bed until you were sure the fever had broken, until you were certain he wouldn't slip away in the night. He was on his feet again, tentatively — in enormous amounts of pain, though he would never admit it — and he pulled you aside to take you here as soon as the clerics would let him out of their sight.

He sat you down in the dandelions and told you of his mother and father, a hardworking sailor and an elven fisherwoman, bright and loving and full of life. A childhood cut short by responsibility, when the Rot came to Melmond and took the crops — took his mother with the plague, and his father with drink — and left him with hardly any pieces to pick up.

He had never spoken of them before. He was always very tight-lipped about himself, more content to listen than to contribute when stories began to pass round the campfire. This was not for the rest to hear — only for you. You think he knew what you had risked to save his life, and he was giving you a bit of something in return — something deeply personal, something that said _I trust you._ So you decided to trust him, too.

You stand side-by-side on the deck, watching the sun creep below the horizon. The clouds are caught ablaze, gilded orange and red, framed in the richest purple. You take a deep breath of the cool sea air, leaning over the railing as the ship glides over a glass-smooth ocean, reflecting back the sunset in a million glistening shards. It is the type of beauty that fills your chest to bursting, a sight that absolutely defies words. After all you have been through together, after all the blood and tears you have shed in this journey, you are grateful to have had the chance to share this with him before the end.

“Have you ever seen something so beautiful, Elias?”

A gentle laugh, nearly lost in the wind. “Yeah. Something does come to mind.”

You catch the tail end of him looking away, only faintly suggested in the lay of his hair and the lingering smile on his lips.


End file.
